Age Of Consent

[Flyndaran]

In my opinion, if you learned from what happened... Don't keep beating yourself up over it. Mistakes happen, even to the most careful of people. Learn from it, and never make the same mistake again. *shrugs* 'Tis all anyone can do, really

Well I avoided making the "mistake" that my brothers did. They both, while in their low twenties, had sex with two separate 16 year olds. Here in Oregon that's illegal.

[Slytovhand]

Flyn...

Happiness is too rare in this world to actually lose it because someone wishes it upon you. -Flyndaran

(yeah, I just copied it from Ev's sig )

But... Happiness is too rare in the world to beat yourself up over your mistakes... for the rest of your life - especially if you learnt from them.

[goldaries13]

I grew up in Alabama, where the age of consent is 16. I was 15 when I met my now-husband. While people in town knew about and looked the other way when it came to the boys I had been with previously, a lot of people got all up in arms about him and I.

I have no idea why, but I have a few hunches: 1) he was foreign(from Denmark), 2) I had just been in a car accident and was now wheelchair-bound, thus necessating these nosy people to feel I needed to be protected, and 3) my father was long since deceased, and therefore unable to deal with this "problem," and my mother was being unwilling or was unable to(she told me herself, that it was my life, my body, and if I wanted to do anything with this guy, to just remember to keep taking my BC pills and to use a condom), so the townspeople had to step up.

We weren't having sex yet, by the way, which is probably the only thing that saved what happened from going any further. I was 15 and he was 16, almost 17. Which means which he could not be charged with sexual abuse in the second degree, which is a class A misdemeanor, but he could be charged (if one were to squint a bit) with rape in the second degree, which is a class B felony.

Because one of these "concerned townspeople" (my mom's boss) was worried about my being "led astray" (Ha! I hated to tell that man, but it was too late: I had already been "led astray" by his own son two years earlier), he turned the Dane in for statutory rape. The police went on this complaint rather than trying to persuade my mother or myself to make one (probably because they knew it was useless to try and do so).

The Dane was actually "detained" (not arrested) for three days while I had to undergo a physical examination to prove whether or not we had sex. Since there was no evidence (I guess these people never heard of condoms. Just saying), the Dane was let go. But I was pissed.

Keep in mind, the Dane was not a citizen, and only in the country on a student visa. If he had been arrested and charged with this class B felony, even if the charges had been later dropped(which they would have been), his admission to the college he was attending would have been revoked, therefore his student visa would be no good, therefore he would have had to go back to Denmark. I'm not saying this was the intent of the people in the town where I lived, but it made me all the more anxious to finish high school and go to New York for college like I had planned.

I'm all for age of consent reform, especially in Alabama. Just think: you have to be older to be charged with the misdemeanor, but you can be younger and charged with the felony. That's not right.